The Foldable iPhone and Touchscreen MacBook Pro Have Arrived—How Much Pressure Are Developers Under to Adapt?

Foldable iPhone and touchscreen Mac arrive one after another—is Apple about to make developers "suffer" again? 37/21 13 hours ago Apple innovates, developers work overtime.

In the past week alone, Apple has presented users with two somewhat unfamiliar multiple-choice questions in succession.

On October 23, Apple's first foldable-screen phone, the iPhone Duo, officially went on sale. Unlike the iPhones people have been familiar with for more than a decade, it moves the status bar, navigation bar, and even the Dynamic Island to the side of the screen, and once unfolded, many interaction methods never before seen in traditional iOS appear.

A few days later, on October 28, Apple released the first MacBook Pro to support touchscreens. The laptop touchscreen that Steve Jobs once considered ergonomically unsound has finally appeared on Apple's own computers.

Apart from the MacBook Pro replacing the notch with the Dynamic Island—a change that could be considered expected, and even long awaited by many users—the other interaction designs of the two new products have sparked considerable controversy.

Some believe Apple has finally let go of its past obsessions, while others question whether these changes actually make the devices easier to use or merely add complexity to operations. The iPhone Duo in particular, with the adaptation problems of a large number of third-party apps after launch, makes people doubt whether Apple is prepared.

However, when Apple begins redesigning the interaction rules for Mac and iPhone, compared with users needing to readjust their operating habits, developers may be the ones with the bigger headache. Apple's design philosophy has changed drastically, but interaction is not necessarily better.

If I had to pick the design that best represents Apple's shift this time, I think it would first be the MacBook Pro's touchscreen.

In 2010, Jobs publicly criticized the ergonomic problems of touchscreen laptops, arguing that it is unreasonable to hold one's arm up for long periods to operate a vertical screen. In 2012, Cook went further, using the metaphor of "a refrigerator and a toaster" to oppose forcibly merging the tablet and laptop experiences.

More than a decade later, Apple has ultimately decided to bring fingers to the Mac screen. But interestingly, Apple did not transform macOS into another iPadOS; instead, it chose to add touchscreen support on top of the existing desktop interaction.

When users use a mouse or trackpad, window buttons and the menu bar remain at traditional sizes. But when operating with a finger, the touch areas of the corresponding controls automatically expand, and some menus and sliders also adjust according to the input method. Users can also directly control content on the screen through finger swiping, two-finger zooming, drag-and-drop, and other operations.

This design looks quite clever. Apple is unwilling to sacrifice the long-standing keyboard-and-mouse efficiency of the Mac, while also hoping to provide touchscreen users with a more natural experience.

MacBook Pro, image source: Apple

But the problems have not disappeared. In its hands-on experience, The Verge found that although Apple redesigned the screen hinge, the screen still wobbles when pressed firmly. More importantly, touchscreen laptops can never avoid the fatigue of raising one's hand to operate, as well as the precision gap between fingers and the mouse pointer.

For scenarios such as browsing web pages and zooming photos, directly touching the screen is indeed intuitive. But for video editing, fine retouching, or complex multi-window office work, is frequently switching between the keyboard, trackpad, and screen really more efficient than the original way of operating?

One can only say that, at least for now, the answer Apple has given is not convincing enough.

Moreover, the new MacBook Pro does not adopt a two-in-one convertible design and does not support Apple Pencil. Apple clearly has no intention of making touchscreen the main way to operate the Mac, but hopes it will offer more possibilities in specific scenarios.

In other words, the MacBook Pro's touchscreen is more like a supplement. Users can continue to maintain their past operating habits and hardly need to pay any learning cost for the new design.

But the iPhone Duo is completely different.

Image source: Leitech

To accommodate the 5.4-inch outer screen and 7.6-inch inner screen, Apple has almost reorganized an entire set of iOS interaction layouts.

The most conspicuous change is that controls originally located at the top and bottom of the screen—such as the navigation bar, toolbar, and Dock—have been uniformly moved to the side of the screen. Apple hopes in this way to save the already limited vertical space, while also giving users a more continuous operating experience when folding, unfolding, and rotating the device.

But Ars Technica pointed out that the sidebar clearly favors right-handed operation, making some buttons difficult to reach when holding the device with the left hand. More awkwardly, although Apple moved controls to the side in hopes of increasing content display space, after the virtual keyboard pops up, the content that can still be displayed on the outer screen remains pitifully small. The Verge also noticed another problem:

The iPhone operating habits formed over nearly two decades suddenly become less reliable on the Duo.

For example, the back buttons in some apps have moved from the upper left corner to the right side, while the traditional edge-swipe gesture has not fully changed accordingly. Users sometimes even need to first determine whether the current app has been adapted for the Duo before they can figure out where to find familiar operations.

However, compared with the sidebar, Apple's choice regarding multitasking may be more worth discussing.

The iPhone Duo does not simply bring iPadOS to a foldable screen; instead, it redesigns dual-app split screen based on iOS 27. Users can open two apps side by side, and after folding the device, continue one of the tasks on the outer screen. Whether in terms of operation logic or animation transitions, this is a design with considerable thought.

But Apple also stipulates that the two apps can only split the screen in a 50/50 ratio; users cannot freely resize the windows, nor does it support adding another free-floating window on top, as some Android foldables do. This creates a strange contradiction:

Apple wants the iPhone Duo to deliver productivity beyond that of a traditional phone, yet it is unwilling to give users too much freedom in managing windows. It wants users to enjoy a larger screen, but it does not directly open up the full iPadOS interaction capabilities.

Image source: Leitech

Compared with Android foldable makers such as Samsung, which emphasize flexibility, Apple clearly cares more about consistency across different scenarios and whether the operating rules are simple and easy to understand. This trade-off certainly cannot be called wrong outright. After all, more complex window management may not suit everyone. But when Apple unifies the interaction method for all users, it also means that some people's usage needs have to be compromised.

The trouble does not end there. After the iPhone Duo went on sale, a large number of third-party apps still could not make full use of the foldable screen; when unfolded, they could only display a small window in the center of the screen, leaving large black bars on both sides.

When Apple changes a set of interaction rules that has been in use for more than a decade, it is obviously impossible for the millions of apps originally designed for traditional iPhones to all complete the transition overnight. These new interaction designs have also brought developers a lot of trouble. Apple is busy with "innovation," while developers are busy with adaptation

As early as September 9, the day the iPhone Duo was released, well-known iOS developer Steve Troughton-Smith expressed dissatisfaction on Mastodon. In his view, this was almost equivalent to a brand-new platform suddenly appearing, leaving developers with only this much preparation time:

About one month.

"The problem with those beautiful devices is that they always come with homework, and the homework is always ours." Juan Marin, editor of iOS Dev Weekly, also said.

Of course, Apple has not completely ignored developers' situation. Whether it is the touchscreen on the MacBook Pro or the new interface of the iPhone Duo, Apple is doing its best to reduce compatibility costs through system frameworks.

On the Mac, macOS 27 can automatically convert touch into traditional mouse clicks. For a large number of apps using standard AppKit and SwiftUI controls, developers do not even need to update them to achieve basic touch operations. Apple has also provided new touch APIs that let developers enlarge the actual touch area of buttons, recognize multi-touch, or adjust operations that previously could only be triggered by mouse hover.

The same is true for the iPhone Duo.

Apple has provided new development tools and design guidelines for foldable screens. As long as an app uses standard SwiftUI and UIKit navigation components, the system can automatically move some navigation controls to the side and adjust the layout according to the current screen size. Especially for apps that already support iPad split screen and adaptive windows, this basic adaptation may not be as difficult as imagined.

But the problem is that running properly and truly being suitable for the new interaction method are completely different things.

After the iPhone Duo went on sale, a developer shared his adaptation experience in the Apple developer community on Reddit. He said that for native apps with good compatibility, it might take only one to three hours, but for an app developed using the cross-platform framework .NET MAUI, he spent 19 hours and still had not completed all the adjustments.

Another developer mentioned that his app has more than 50 interfaces, requiring him to adjust the position of navigation controls one by one and redesign some split-column layouts for the inner screen. Fortunately, with AI Coding, the originally tedious work ultimately took only three days. But another developer encountered the completely opposite situation. He originally thought he had completed optimization through the simulator, but after getting the real device, he found the experience was terrible and listed another thirty or forty issues that needed fixing.

Image source: Reddit

Apple's automatic adaptation mechanism is indeed effective, but the workload can still vary greatly between different apps. If developers have consistently used standard system components and dynamic layouts, many problems will naturally be handled by Apple. But for apps that make heavy use of custom controls, fixed sizes, or require complex gestures, the new device is likely to mean a full review, or even a rebuild.

In particular, for apps such as games, video editing, and drawing, adaptation is not completed simply by enlarging the original interface.

For example, although Apple allows developers to read the iPhone Duo's folding angle and avoid the crease in the middle of the screen, it cannot directly tell developers how to arrange operation buttons in a more reasonable way in the half-folded state.

Similarly, although the MacBook Pro already allows fingers to click most interfaces, it cannot automatically make the fine operations of professional software such as DaVinci Resolve and Blender suitable for touchscreens.

From this perspective, Apple has solved a large number of technical compatibility problems for developers, but the work that truly determines whether the interaction experience is good or bad still needs to be completed by developers themselves. Moreover, adaptation cost is only half of the problem.

More importantly, why should developers invest time in these new interactions?

Before the iPhone Duo went on sale, Apple specifically published a press release introducing third-party apps that had already been adapted for the iPhone Duo, including many very interesting cases:

Flexibits, the developer of Fantastical, uses the unfolded large screen to display the calendar, tasks, and navigation menu simultaneously, bringing the iPhone experience closer to that of the iPad and Mac. The video editing app Detail displays video footage and transcribed text side by side, allowing users to edit podcasts and interviews as if they were editing documents.

Detail, image source: Apple

These apps have clearly found some scenarios in which foldable screens can genuinely improve the existing experience. But in developer discussions on Reddit, more people are considering just how much return there is in developing exclusive features for a foldable phone priced at nearly $2,000 with an unclear user base.

Some developers explicitly said they had not even opened the simulator to check their apps, because for now they did not think it was worth the investment.

This attitude is not hard to understand. For top apps like WeChat and Netflix, adapting to Apple's new devices is almost an inevitable choice. But for independent developers of limited scale, adaptation means not only development costs, but also testing, maintenance, and the long-term investment of continuing to support different devices in the future.

Especially for the touchscreen on the MacBook Pro, basic compatibility can already be handled by the system. If there are no features particularly suited to touch operation, why should developers redesign a whole set of interactions specifically for it?

Conversely, although the iPhone Duo brings more direct adaptation pressure, it may also create new opportunities for developers. For example, in the past many utility apps were limited by the iPhone's single portrait screen and could only make users switch interfaces repeatedly. Now, through inner-screen split view, half-fold posture, and dual-screen collaboration, they have the opportunity to complete tasks that previously required multiple operations within a single interface.

This is also why, when facing the same new device, some developers think Apple is once again adding to their workload, while others cannot wait to start exploring new ways of using it. Ultimately, what determines whether developers are willing to invest is not just how difficult adaptation is, but also how much value the new interaction methods can bring to apps. Final thoughts

From the iPhone Duo to the touchscreen MacBook Pro, Apple is breaking some of the interaction rules it has long adhered to.

This is certainly not a bad thing. After all, when phone screens can fold and laptops finally support direct touch, the operating methods built around fixed hardware forms in the past do indeed need to be re-examined.

But the value of new interactions is ultimately not something only Apple can prove.

Apple can design new navigation bars, provide new APIs, and even let developers complete basic adaptation by changing just a few lines of code, but it cannot create truly valuable usage scenarios for all software.

For users, whether relearning operating habits is worthwhile depends on whether they can ultimately get a better experience. For developers, whether they are willing to invest time also depends on whether the new interactions can create new value.

So, rather than focusing on just how much of a "mess" Apple is making this time, I am more concerned about how many apps developers can deliver in the coming months that are truly worth users changing their habits for. After all, Apple can decide how interaction design changes, but whether these changes can become meaningful still requires the entire software ecosystem to provide the answer.

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